Remember the last post, the one about Chinese New Year? Well, today is the first day of the new year in the lunar calendar (or the second day, depending on when I finished this), and I'm already in another place. READ MORE BELOW:
How This All Began:
A couple weeks before, while I was doing my school homework, my mom came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go to my grandma's house in Tianjin for the Chinese New Year vacation, and I said I would think about it. Well, I said yes afterwards, because I got a lot of friends here.
But what really happens is a lot different than what I thought would happen...
Well, it turned out at first that I was going only with my dad. Boooo! Then, I found out that we were going to go to Beijing as part of our trip. Yay! This was because flights that went directly to Tianjin were expensive, so we decided to fly to Beijing, then take the half hour train to Tianjin. This was particularly good, because Beijing has a few great festivals and "must see" things and places, so I could see them all in just one trip! That's the first part.
SEE BELOW:
Part One: Beijing:
As I told you, I had to go to Beijing first. In Beijing, there were many fun things I could do, so I had to choose. Of course, I wanted to go to ALL the fun places, but I would never have so much time to go to all that.
The start of the Beijing adventure was as early as the airport. This was because I got to visit the legendary TERMINAL 3! Well, okay, maybe it wasn't "visiting". Maybe it was just a streak of good luck. Anyways, I got to see some great new architecture, and some pretty stunning designs. It felt good to be in new section of an already very big airport, and it was very beautiful, too.
After that, I asked my dad where we were going. He said that we were going to a festival called "Chang Dian Miao Hui", where there are small performances, many food stands (when I say many, I mean A LOT), and too many crowds. My favourite part was probably the food stands (haha, food... yumm!). Most of the foods that were there were traditional Chinese foods, like "Cha Tang". "Cha Tang" is a mixture of special tasty spices, or flavours, mixed with a lot of flour. You have to pour boiling hot water onto the mix to produce "Cha Tang". After making that most important part, you can add tiny pieces of rice cakes, and bits of fruit. One of the main special parts of making the "Cha Tang" is the huge teapot that is very fancy. It holds the boiling water. It's just fascinating to see the cooks tip over the huge teapot and watch the water splash really far into the mix. Once you see it, you will probably remember that. It tasted great when I ate it, so you must try it too! (I mean, REALLY!)
I also liked the sugar sculptures. The sugar sculptures were sculptures of animals made of red or yellow sugar. To make the sculptures, first they heated the sugar. Second, the blew it and shaped it into a ball. Third, they made the shape of the animal's body. Fourth, they shaped and pulled out the animal's legs. And finally, they pushed in a wooden stick, and let it harden. The stands that sell those are always CRAWLING with people, so it's pretty hard to buy one. That is why I couldn't buy one. :-(
After going to the festival, I was really tired, so my dad decided to take me to the "Lao She Cha Guanr", or Lao She Teahouse. It's a very old and famous teahouse in Beijing, and was visited by George HW Bush sometime in the 1990's. There's a lot of Chinese culture in there, so it's very suitable for westerners like me. We went and bought a ticket for a performance (well okay, not ONE, but many), and sat down upstairs to watch it. We got seated at the front, which was good. We sat down at the same table with a bunch of Japanese people (though one person and her daughter was Chinese, and could speak Japanese very well), and my dad started talking with them (did I tell you that my dad has been in Japan for 16 years?). I started looking around the table, waiting for the performance to start. On the table, there were many little snacks, some watermelon seeds (for eating), and a cup of tea for each person. Finally, the show started.
There were 7 performances:
- Pi Ying Xi
- Acrobatics
- Magic
- Hand Shadowing
- Mei Hua Da Gu
- Teapot Acrobatics
- Face Changing
The first performance was "Pi Ying Xi", which is kind of like a Beijing Opera performance, but each character is printed on a piece of paper with a stick glued on the back. They put the characters behind a bright screen, and moved them around. It was fascinating, seeing them move around in a 2D world, but it got boring soon. I fiddled around with my cell phone, and waited for the show to end. It ended pretty quickly, and another show started.
After that show was acrobatics. You know how cool acrobatics are, but I couldn't expect much from a small cramped area. It turned out that I was right. There wasn't any swinging around or stuff, just a few back flips and stuff with fire. It wasn't THAT good, but it was good enough.
After that was the REALLY funny one. It was hand shadowing, which is putting your hand behind a bright screen to make a shadow. The guy that was performing was really good at this, and he put on music and made his hand shadows look like singers singing the music. After that, there were some animal sounds, and he made animal shadows. To me, that was the best show.
Then, there was a magic show. The magic show was actually the best, with all kinds of different tricks. The magician said that no magic is real, but he demonstrated the extremes of this by placing a person inside a room with cloth walls, slightly held up by 2 men. Before placing the person in the room, the magician asked 2 volunteers to examine a tiny table with two wooden sticks sticking out. Then, they had to tie a person's hands to the sticks very tightly. After that, the person was placed into the small room with the table attached to her. The person was then asked to ring a bell placed inside the room. This seemed impossible to everyone that was watching, but we all heard a bell ring, and we even saw a lump that came out from the cloth walls of the small room! The two volunteers from before were then told to go into the small room and witness it happen, but instead, they got tied onto the table! That part was really weird, but it was the end.
After that one was probably the the Chinese singing with instuments, which is a lady singing and two people beside her playing stringed instruments. I didn't enjoy that very much, because it was kind of boring.
Here is a fascinating part: TEAPOT ACROBATICS!!! You might not understand what that means, but just think of what teapots and acrobatics put together can be. If you guessed jumping around with teapots everywhere, CONGRAGULATIONS, YOU'RE WRONG!! No, it's not that stupid. Actually, it's 2 guys with very long-spouted teapots. performing different cool ways to pour the tea. And they kind of put acrobatics as part of it!
But the last one, face-changing, was really mysterious. You should guess this. If you guessed that it is changing faces like changing masks, CONGRAGULATIONS, YOU'RE PARTLY RIGHT!! The difference in this is, it happens without you evening seeing anything peculiar, the face just changes in a fraction of a second. This was very strange, so people started to come up with these stupid theories of what they think happens, but I know that they're all wrong. I just think that maybe somehow, the performer wore several layers of faces, and one layer disappears somewhere to reveal the next layer.
And finally, everything was over as fast as it started. It ended pretty quickly, with no conclusion or whatsoever. The announcer just said that it was over, and it was over.
That is the end of the first day in Beijing!
Coming up next: The first day! (For Real!)
Until next time... (Next Post)
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